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Computers

What Is Dark Matter and More Questions From Our Readers

You asked, we answered

An undated photo of video-game pioneer Roberta Williams during the early days of Sierra On-Line, the company she and her husband founded.

The Pioneer of Graphic Adventure Games Was a Woman

Mystery House was the first home computer game ever to include graphics as well as text

It was a pivotal moment in computing history when a computer beat a human at chess for the first time, but that doesn't mean chess is "solved."

Computers Are Great at Chess, But That Doesn’t Mean the Game Is ‘Solved’

On this day in 1996, the computer Deep Blue made history when it beat Garry Kasparov

Douglas Engelbart rehearsing for his 1968 computer demo.

In One 1968 Presentation, This Inventor Shaped Modern Computing

Douglas Engelbart’s career was about seeing the possibilities of what computing could do for humanity

Isaac Asimov at age 70.

If Isaac Asimov Had Named The Smartphone, He Might Have Called It The “Pocket Computer Mark II”

The sci-fi author correctly predicted a number of innovations that have come to pass

Trending Today

We Will Have to Endure 2016 One Second Longer Than an Average Year

It’s not giving up the ghost quite yet

Crossword puzzles have been around for over one hundred years. In that time, they've gone through fads.

Why Crossword Puzzles Are Still Mostly Written By Humans

Computers can write sports articles, replace stock brokers and help diagnose patients. But they can’t write good crosswords

Students of design at the Berlin Weissensee School of Art have prototyped a new device that tracks gestures in an amputated limb and translates them to computer commands.

This Digital Prosthesis Could Help Amputees Control Computers

Designers are developing a new device that tracks gestures in an amputated limb and translates them to computer commands, like scroll and click

Robert Noyce (left) and Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in from of the Intel SC1 building in Santa Clara, 1970.

The Innovative Spirit fy17

Silicon Valley Owes Its Success To This Tech Genius You’ve Never Heard Of

Robert Noyce was one of the founders of Silicon Valley

The mansion at Bletchley Park.

Cool Finds

Alan Turing’s World War II Headquarters Will Once Again House Codebreakers

Bletchley Park is being revived as a cybersecurity training center

Why Artificial Intelligence Won’t Replace CEOs

An MBA’s instinct is increasingly vital in the age of information overload

New Research

American TV Watchers Spend Over a Year of Their Life Channel Surfing

As options of shows and ways to watch them increase, so does the time it takes to find something to watch

An annotated note hidden in the margins of an 18th-century mathematical manuscript by a past restoration attempt.

Cool Finds

How Experts Are Digitizing Ancient Manuscripts

Digital preservation is more work than it might seem

Whoever dies with the most friends wins? It's complicated.

New Research

Facebook Might Help You Live Longer, According to Facebook Researchers

It depends on whether online social ties strengthen real-world social ties, which are known to be good for your health

New Research

Pediatricians Switch Up Screen Time Rules for Tots

Doctors say there’s no “one size fits all” approach to introducing kids to technology

The Countess of Computing was the daughter of the Princess of Parallelograms.

Trending Today

Five Things to Know About Ada Lovelace

The “Countess of Computing” didn’t just create the world’s first computer program—she foresaw a digital future

New Research

Listen to the First Computer-Made Tune on Alan Turing’s Synthesizer

From code-breaker to musical innovator

Put down your pencil—convincing computer-generated handwriting is here.

New Research

This Algorithm Lets You “Write” Like the Greats

Your words, their handwriting

Trending Today

Police Request 3D-Printed Copy of a Dead Man’s Fingers to Unlock His Smartphone

No more guessing passwords

How You Wound Up Playing ‘The Oregon Trail’ in Computer Class

From the 1970s to 1990s, the government-owned Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium dominated the educational software market with more than 300 games

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